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Radmilo Vuković was born on 28 July 1952 in the village of Rataje located in the municipality of Foča, southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. In his capacity as member of the military forces of the so-called Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as “Republika Srpska”, Vuković allegedly had sexual intercourse with a woman from the Foča municipality without her consent. On 13 August 2008, the Appeals Panel of the War Crimes section of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not find Vuković guilty, because the main piece of evidence provided by the victim and presented before the Appellate Panel contained inconsistencies. Therefore, it could not be established beyond reasonable doubt that Vuković raped the woman.

On 31 July 1992, in Novo Selo (Kotor Varoš Municipality), Marko Škrobić, as a member of the Kotor Varoš HVO (Croat Defence Council) unit, entered the house of Glamocak family, together with four other armed persons. He ordered Boro Glamocak and his family to leave the house immediately. He also forced Stojko Glamocak, Boro’s father, out of the adjacent building and marched the family into the direction of the village of Ravne. On the way to that village, Marko Škrobić shot Stojko with a pistol, leading to his death.

The Court relied heavily on the testimonies of Boro Glamocak and his wife and daughters. The Court discussed how it weighed the reliability and credibility of the eyewitness testimonies. Through the evidence entered into the record, Marko Škrobić was found guilty of war crimes against civilians and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.

Mirko Todorović was born on 15 May 1954 in the village of Bratunac in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Miloš Radić was born on 5 June 1959 in the village of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Todorović and Radić were found guilty of participating in an attack conducted in Bratunac on 20 May 1992, which was directed against Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) civilians. On that day, Todorović and four other members of the Serbian army arrested 14 Bosniak civilians and brought them to a house where one of the civilians was killed. Todorović, together with Radić, did not allow the other civilians to leave the house. The civilians were beaten, cursed, and their money and valuable items were taken away. Subsequently, the civilians were brought to a slope on a nearby creek, lined up and killed.

The claimant’s father was a French Jew who was interned in France and deported to a concentration camp by the Vichy regime during World War II. The claimant brought proceedings for reparations before the Administrative Tribunal of Paris alleging that the French State and the French railway company that facilitated the transfer and deportation, the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais (SNCF) was at fault.

The case was transferred to the Conseil d’Etat, the highest administrative body in France, for advice. The Conseil d’Etat ruled that the acts of the French State, which contributed to the deportation of persons considered as Jews by the Vichy regime, constituted faults for which its responsibility was engaged. The Advice was the first time that the Conseil had ruled that reparation of such exceptional suffering could not be restricted to financial measures: they implied a solemn acknowledgement of the collective prejudice suffered by those persons, because of the role the French State played in their deportation, quoting the 1964 law suppressing time limitation on crimes against humanity, or the 1995 Presidential statement acknowledging the responsibility of the French State.

The Advice is to be eminently helpful for the 400 similar cases currently pending before French administrative courts. 

Zijad Kurtović, a commander of a military police platoon of the Bosnian army, was accused of involvement in war crimes committed during the war between Croatia and Bosnia (1992-1995). More specifically, he was charged with torturing and otherwise inflicting serious mental and physical harm to Croatian civilians and prisoners of war in a Roman Catholic church in October 1993, by beating them, forcing them to eat pages from the Bible, using and ordering others to use Croatian civilians and prisoners of war as human shields on the frontlines, and with forcing two detained HVO soldiers to perform an oral sexual intercourse. In first instance, Kurtović was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment.

Kurtović appealed on several grounds, arguing that the first instance Panel had erred in law (using the wrong law) and in fact (wrongly established certain facts). The prosecution also appealed against the sentence, which was, in its view, too lenient. The Appellate Panel partly agreed with Kurtović where it concerned the classification of the crimes. It could not be established with certainty which victims had been combatants; however, as it was evident that all detained persons were entitled to protection under common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and that they were to be qualified (as is usual under the law of war in case of doubt) as civilians. However, the findings on the facts remained further unchanged. Therefore, the Appellate Panel amended the conviction to only include war crimes against civilians and the wanton destruction of religious monuments. The prosecutor’s appeal was dismissed; the 11-year prison sentence was upheld.